Five relics whose stories have gripped the world – CatholicHerald.co.uk Friday, 20 Nov 2015 St Francis Xavier As a new centre to study relics opens in Oxford, Fr Matthew Pittam takes a look at some more unusual examples The University of Oxford is to become a world leading centre into the study of religious relics following the launch of a new department. This ground-breaking centre, based in Keble College’s Advanced Studies Centre, is to be composed of computer and medical scientists as well as historians, classicists and theologians. Such an interdisciplinary approach builds upon work that has been undertaken by the university’s archaeological school since the 1980s. Past achievements within the university have included the dating of the shroud of Turin , which involved study in three laboratories and the radiocarbon accelerator unit. This new unit is the first time that such a wide-ranging field of experts has been brought together in this way. The use of relics in Christian worship is ancient but for some it represents the worst excesses of superstition. Here are some of the more unusual, quirky and controversial relics.

The head of St Catherine of Siena – San Domenico Basilica Siena, Italy A painting of St Catherine of Siena St Catherine of Siena lived a pious life after experiencing a vision of Jesus at the age of seven. Her parents had arranged her marriage to a local man. In order to resist this attempt and preserve her virginity, she cut off her hair and scalded her head with hot water. She died in Rome in 1380 and the people of Siena asked for her body to be returned home but were refused. Some of her devotees secretly dug up her body and severed her head, placing it in a bag. There is a legend that when the roman guard apprehended those who had taken the head, all that was found in the bag were rose petals. When they finally arrived in Siena the rose petals had miraculously turned back into St Catherine’s head. Today St Catherine’s head can be seen alongside her thumb and attracts large number of pilgrims each year. Her body remains in Rome and her foot is claimed to be in a reliquary in Venice.

The Holy Prepuce (Christ’s foreskin) – stolen in the 1980s Since the Middle Ages 19 churches have claimed to possess the foreskin of Jesus. It is often said that St Catherine of Siena wore one as a ring. The earliest recorded relic of the Prepuce was when Charlemagne presented one to Pope Leo III in the year AD 800. Charlemagne claimed that it had been brought to him by an angel while he was praying in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In 1527 the relic was stolen from the Basilica of St John Lateran, during the Sack of Rome. It was recovered from a soldier’s prison cell in 1557. Later the relic was reposed in Calcutta, where a 10-year indulgence was attached to making a pilgrimage of veneration. The last time this particular prepuce was seen was during a procession on the Feast of the Circumcision in 1983. Shortly afterwards it was reported stolen. St Antonius’s body – Church of San Marco, Florence, Italy St Antonius’s body was said to be incorruptible.

After his death in 1459, his body was left exposed for eight days and didn’t apparently show any signs of decomposition. Following this miracle, his body was placed in a glass coffin to allow his many followers to venerate him. During his life he was renowned for his piety and his frugal lifestyle. When he was offered an archbishopric by Pope Eugene IV he refused and had to be threatened with excommunication before he would accept. He entered the Dominican Novitiate with Fra Angelico (the artist) and Fra Bartolommeo (the miniaturist) where all three were under the directorship of Blessed Lawrence of Ripafratta. St Antonius’ Body is preserved under an altar in San Marco church today. Blessed John Henry Newman – The Oratory of St Philip Neri, Birmingham, UK The exhumation of Venerable John Henry Newman’s body was surrounded with great controversy. He had been buried at Rednal cemetery, near Birmingham, in a shared grave with his lifelong friend Fr Ambrose St John, as had been his wish.

The planned exhumation of his remains were finally agreed by the Ministry of Justice as a special case, as English law prohibits the removal of a body from a graveyard to a church tomb. The debate became heated, with human rights activist Peter Tatchell accusing the Catholic Church of “moral vandalism”. Permission was eventually granted on 11 August 2008, the 118th anniversary of Newman’s death. Upon exhumation, Newman’s body was not in a lead coffin, as had been anticipated, and his remains had completely decomposed. The only artefacts retrieved, were an inscription plate and cloth. These relics were added to locks of hair and other items already possessed by the Oratory in Birmingham. They are now on display for public veneration in a special chapel. The hand of St Francis Xavier – Gesu, Rome Born in 1506, he was a co-founder of the Society of Jesus. St Francis Xavier was one of the first seven Jesuits to take vows of Chasity and obedience in 1534. He was a prolific preacher and teacher, most notably in India although he also had an influence in Japan and Borneo.

He was beatified by Pope Gregory XV on 12th March 1662. Initially he was buried on a beach on Shangchuan Island, in the South China Sea. His incorrupt body was then taken to Portuguese Malacca and buried in St Paul’s Church. In 1553 St Francis body was exhumed and moved to the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa. His reliquary was constructed to reflect Italian and Indian styles and has four sides depicting different scenes from the Saint’s life. St Francis’ right forearm was detached in 1914 and moved the main Jesuit Church in Rome, The Gesu. His left arm was initially going to be sent to Japan but was given to the Cathedral Church in Macau due to the religious persecution in Japan. Since 1978 the left hand has since been kept in various locations. — My scepticism and slight aversion to relics has been challenged over the last few years. During the consecration of our Church, I and other members of the congregation were moved by the sealing of the relics into the altar.

This simple ceremony really gave a sense of continuity with the early church and helped us to feel a spiritual link to the three saints whose relics were reposed. In addition, the UK tour of St Therese of Lisieux’s relics in 2009 and St Don Bosco’s in 2013 were unexpectedly significant occasions. These events attracted many thousands of pilgrims and demonstrated the evangelistic opportunity that relics can provide. In my work as a school chaplain, I find that the one thing that most fascinates pupils about the school chapel are the relics. These relics provide an opportunity to talk and share the faith of the saints with students who would ordinarily switch off. I remember a friend telling me how he had retrieved relics from a presbytery bin when the parish priest had disposed of them in the early 1980s. This just shows how relics have been regarded by many more recently. Hopefully, the new Oxford Centre for the Study of Relics will help further advance and promote the use of relics in the Church and encourage us to think afresh about their importance. Whilst studies will undoubtedly identify some relics as counterfeit or misidentified, others may be confirmed as originating from the time and place where the holy person lived.

It will certainly give the veneration of relics more credibility. Subscribe at your app store: Related stories The magical mystical tour: Why are the relics of St Thérèse such a holy hit? | The Independent The magical mystical tour: Why are the relics of St Thérèse such a holy hit? The magical mystical tour: Why are the relics of St Thérèse such a holy hit? 1/3 3/3 Getty Images One afternoon in a few weeks' time a train will pull into the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone, and a hearse containing an unusually ornate coffin will drive carefully on to the platform to meet it. The hearse will then thread its way out on to the motorway before setting off through Kent to a church where a small band of people will be waiting eagerly to pay their respects. There will be prayers, and maybe a hymn or two, but no tears. The occupant of the coffin, after all, died more than a century ago: she was a young girl from northern France who entered a Carmelite convent at the tender age of 15, before dying nine years later of tuberculosis.

Her name was Thérèse Martin, but to her welcoming committee in Kent, and to the hundreds and maybe thousands of people across the UK who will gather round her coffin in the month that follows, she is St Thérèse of Lisieux; and the point of bringing her body to Britain, they would say, is not to mourn her life, but to celebrate it. So begins the extraordinary – some think bizarre – phenomenon of a long-dead, sainted nun on tour. Because for four weeks from 16 September, Thérèse's hearse will criss-cross Britain, travelling from Portsmouth to Plymouth, from Manchester to Middlesbrough, from Leeds to Lancaster. At each venue – and there are 22 in all, including Wormwood Scrubs prison in west London – there will be services, and opportunities for both believers and the merely curious to pay their respects. It's the first time Thérèse will have been to the UK, but her coffin has certainly seen a bit of the world: her remains have so far toured more than 40 countries including the US, Australia, Iraq, Mexico and Siberia.

Immediately before the UK she'll have been in Guyana, and after her British tour she leaves for Tunisia. She's quite probably the world's best-travelled corpse – which is particularly ironic given that she spent almost all her 24 years of life in one place, the town of Lisieux in northern France. The globetrotting started in 1997, the centenary of Thérèse's death. Part of her body (her remains are split between caskets, so that some always remain in Lisieux) had been taken on a regional tour across France and then the bishops in Brazil requested a visit. Since then it's snowballed beyond anyone's expectations. Sister Monique-Marie, the nun who organises the tours, says she's continually amazed by the requests. "It certainly wasn't planned for the relics to do so much touring: it was just that one request led to another, and now we're booked up until the end of 2010. Wherever she goes, Thérèse pulls in the crowds – and it's not just people who go to church, it's all sorts of people. We can't explain what's going on," she says.

But despite the fact that it's become so widespread, even many Catholic churchgoers perceive Thérèse's posthumous wanderings, 112 years after her death, as mystifying. Some are outwardly hostile, calling it "a circus" and shaking their heads in horror at the ghoulishness. Cardinal Basil Hume, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales until his death in 1999, seems to have had his doubts: despite the fact that he was said to have been particularly devoted to the saint, he blocked attempts for her remains to come here while he was in office. It wasn't until his successor, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, was approached two years ago that the champions of her cause got the green light to go ahead with the trip. But who was Thérèse Martin – and why, instead of being laid to rest, is she enjoying a peripatetic eternity? The answers to these questions lie in Lisieux, an unremarkable town in Normandy that lost most of its centre during heavy Second World War bombing raids (although, miraculously some might say, the buildings associated with Thérèse were unscathed).

It's an hour-and-a-half by train from Paris, and the first thing you notice, as you step out of the station, is the vast, white basilica that dominates the skyline, built in the 1930s and 1940s after Thérèse was canonised, as a place of worship for the pilgrims who began to flock here. Thérèse's legacy is everywhere in Lisieux: the shops groan with memorabilia, rosaries, bookmarks – and the ubiquitous plaster statues which depict a figure in traditional Carmelite garb (black veil, white wimple, brown scapular, cream cloak), clutching a crucifix and several stems of red roses to her breast. This is the image of Thérèse I know from my Catholic childhood: the Thérèse whose statue adorns a million Catholic churches across the globe, the girl-nun who died tragically after a short lifetime of self-sacrifice, the so-called Little Flower ' (hence those roses) whose last promise was that she would shower down graces from heaven like a rose-petal rainshower. That same Thérèse, unsurprisingly, is here in the Carmelite chapel in Lisieux.

Her effigy, made of marble and wood, lies Sleeping Beauty-like in a glass casket, her face turned serenely towards the viewer, her cloak falling delicately around her shoulders and a tiny, almost imperceptible smile on her face. Strewn around the casket are flowers – roses, mostly – deposited by the hundreds of visitors who flock here each day to offer some prayers to one of the best-loved saints of the 20th century. By any reckoning, Thérèse's rise to fame has been remarkable. When she died, in the infirmary of this convent, on 30 September 1897, her life seemed so pathetically uneventful that her sisters in the community wondered what the prioress could write in the traditional obituary that was dispatched to neighbouring convents. Then someone remembered that, a few years earlier, Thérèse had written a short autobiography, and it was decided to use that as the basis of a tribute. The tribute proved popular: its fame spread from convent to convent, and a second print run of 2,000 was ordered.

When the nuns were left with some copies, they resourcefully decided to sell them, and Thérèse's autobiography, The Story of a Soul, has never been out of print since. It's been translated into 50 languages, and millions of copies have been sold worldwide. What drew the millions of readers to her story was the tone of Thérèse's relationship with God. At a time when the Catholic Church championed a deity to be feared, distanced and obeyed, she unravelled a portrait of an intimate, almost brotherly love. For Thérèse, it wasn't so much that she needed God, as that God needed her. "We must not let slip," she wrote, "the smallest opportunity of giving Him joy... He is in such need of love." It was (indeed, in some ways still is) a revolutionary approach to a deity; so, too, was her insistence that it was in the small things of life – the everyday frustrations, disappointments and challenges – as well as in the big heroic deeds, that a love of God could be demonstrated. Her "little way", she called it.

Thérèse's approach to God was to appeal – particularly, in the years soon after her death – to the soldiers of the First World War battlefields not far from Lisieux. For thousands of soldiers who found themselves facing an early death amid the humdrum boredom of daily life in the trenches, Thérèse's mixture of the mundane and the immortal spoke volumes: she became known as "the Angel of the Trenches", and the museum at Lisieux contains hundreds of tokens of gratitude – including medals awarded for valour – brought here by soldiers, mostly French but some British or even German, who felt her words had guided them through the darkest of times. Many made a pilgrimage here, to pray at the grave where her remains still were at the time; as well as the soldiers there were other devotees including, it is said, the family of Edith Piaf who brought their little girl, then aged seven and unable to see, to Thérèse's grave – according to some reports, her sight was miraculously restored following the visit. Eventually this story and others like it, emanating from a far-flung corner of France, reached Rome.

Bishops were instructed to investigate, and Thérèse, a young, consumptive, virginal nun who had devoted her life to a loving God, seemed a perfect candidate for canonisation. In May 1925 she was declared a saint by Pope Pius XI, an elevation that ensured yet more pilgrims would be pouring into Lisieux, and for many decades to come, to worship her memory and to throw their roses at her marble effigy. But there was more to Thérèse Martin than is conveyed in her plaster sainthood: the Church's gloss of innocence and perfection has, across the decades since, obscured a very human young woman who was no stranger to suffering, and in whose heart – even towards the end of her life – there lurked grave doubts. To find the real Thérèse you have to leave the basilica and the Carmelite convent in Lisieux and climb the hill to a handsome, rather well-to-do house called Les Buissonnets, which was the Martin family home. Here, in dark, oak-panelled rooms, Thérèse was raised – but, tragically, it was a motherless childhood.

Zelie, whose ninth and final child Thérèse had been, died of cancer when she was only four years old. Even before Zelie's death, the family had known plenty of sadness: four siblings died in childhood, leaving Thérèse with four older sisters one of whom, 16-year-old Pauline, took on the role of substitute mother ("darling mother", Thérèse calls her in The Story of a Soul). Their father, Louis, the local watchmaker, did his best for his five daughters, but it was Pauline to whom Thérèse was closest – it's hard to imagine how difficult the wrench must have been when, six years after their mother's death, Pauline decided to become a Carmelite nun. Adding insult to injury, three years later another sister, Marie, also entered the Carmel. Can it really have been such a surprise that Thérèse, despite being still a teenager, felt that her life, too, lay within the convent walls? Because she was so young, Thérèse had to battle with the Church authorities for permission to become a Carmelite, even going to the lengths of travelling to Rome with her father to petition the Pope himself.

Eventually, in 1888, she joined her sisters in the convent only to discover, as she settled into Carmelite life, that it wasn't quite the nirvana she had hoped it would be. There were difficult relationships, especially with the prioress and with the novice mistress; she also found the behaviour of some of her fellow nuns extremely irksome (one of them, apparently, chattered her teeth the entire time in chapel, driving the new recruit almost to distraction). Added to all this, outside the convent her father – due, some said, to losing a third daughter to the Carmelites – had suffered a serious breakdown, and was being nursed by the two sisters who remained at home, Céline and Léonie. Inside the convent, Thérèse was beset by doubts: was there really a God, and a heaven? In her autobiography, she writes about her "dark night" and of how she is mocked by a voice which tells her to "Hope on! Hope on! Look forward to death!

It will give you, not what you hope for, but a night darker still, the night of utter nothingness!" The difficult times, she wrote, were like "a wall which reaches to the very heavens, shutting out the starry sky". And the doubts plagued Thérèse right to the end: just weeks before she died, she told one of her fellow nuns that "I don't believe in eternal life... it seems to me that after this mortal life there's nothing more." It's this mixture of suffering and doubt, tragedy and difficulty, that make Thérèse a saint for our times, according to Father Michael McGoldrick, head of the Carmelite order in England and one of those who'll be travelling the country with Thérèse's remains next month. "I think she appeals to people because of her sheer normality. She was the product of a dysfunctional family, she had a tough time growing up, she found much of her life hard-going, and she had huge doubts. A lot of people relate to all that. She isn't a saccharine saint, although I do think she's been portrayed as one over the years.

But now she's being reassessed, and when the sugar coating is off people find they rather like Thérèse." The question is, will touring her remains further his ambition to make more people aware of who she was – or will putting a coffin on show simply turn people off? McGoldrick is adamant it's not just about a coffin: what's important here, he says, is that the relics are a link with Thérèse, and taking them on tour gives people the opportunity to engage with her story and to reflect on the life she had. "There's a lot of power around a body. Wakes are very powerful occasions. There's something about gathering around a coffin that makes you talk about the person it once was – and that's what we're hoping is going to happen with Thérèse in the next few weeks." He's optimistic – wildly optimistic, some might say, given the ungodliness of our age – that the British will be out in force for the planned events. "I was in Ireland when the relics visited there and the response was remarkable. They say 2,000,000 people turned out to see her coffin...

Maybe it won't be so big here, but I think we could be surprised by how popular the services are. The humanity of the woman shines through, and people are very drawn to that." Back at the Carmel in Lisieux there are still nuns who remember Thérèse's sisters – as well as Pauline and Marie a third sister, Céline, eventually entered the convent. (The fourth sister, Léonie, obviously the rebel of the family, became a Visitation nun instead.) Sister Marie Lucille, who has been a Carmelite for 60 years and is now in her eighties, remembers Céline, who died in 1959. "We knew her as Sister Genevieve," she says. "She was a very lively person, and she was a very keen photographer – she was given permission to bring her camera into the convent with her, which was very unusual in those days." Indeed Céline's photographs of Thérèse, both before and after she became a nun, are another key to her fame – it's extremely unusual for Carmelite nuns to be photographed as Thérèse was, especially doing the ordinary things of life.

Céline's camera captured Thérèse haymaking, doing the washing, sitting chatting in the convent garden – even acting in a convent play in the role of St Joan of Arc, the saint she eventually was to join as co-patron saint of France. The day I meet Sister Marie Lucille has seen the profession of a new nun that morning. The life the sisters lead in the convent, she says, is not so different from how it was in Thérèse's time – although, unlike many Carmels, the one here is flourishing. It's another legacy, she is certain, of the Little Flower. "So," she says as we part, "Thérèse is coming next to England. People will like her there, I think. She led a simple life, but it was a life full of love – and though she has been dead a long time, she still has things to teach us about life." Go to church/relics_of_st_therese_of_lisieux for details Relics around the world The word relic comes from the Latin reliquaiae, meaning remains.

According to Church teaching, relics are classified according to how closely associated they were to a holy person: Thérèse's relics, since they are body parts, are "first-class" relics. An item that a saint wore or used, such as a glove or veil, is a second-class relic, while an item he or she merely touched is a third-class relic. Santiago de Compostela is a city built on a relic – the remains of St James, which were acknowledged by the Pope as genuine around 800AD. Since then, millions of pilgrims have walked across Europe to pray there. Relics are venerated in other faiths, too. The Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka (right), houses the upper canine tooth of Buddha, which according to legend was taken as he lay on his funeral pyre. Meanwhile hair from the beard of the Prophet Muhammad, and a collection of his teeth, are kept in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

The basilica at St-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume in Provence is home to a casket containing a skull which is said to be that of Mary Magdalene, who according to legend spent her last days in a cave in the region. More recent saints are revered through relics, too. The church of St Cajetan in Hamrun in Malta has a phial of blood taken from St George Preca as he lay dying in 1962. In 2008 a seller posted a picture on eBay of an envelope said to contain remains of St Bartholomew, but the website prohibits the sale of human parts and they were withdrawn. The Church, too, forbids the commercial use of relics. JM More about: My day with the relics of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux | World news | The Guardian Catholicism My day with the relics of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux Thousands of pilgrims are queueing, night and day, outside Westminster Cathedral. Why does this 'ordinary' saint have such extraordinary appeal? Visiting nuns venerate the relics of St Therese of Lisieux at Westminster Cathedral, London.

Photograph: John Stillwell/PA Tuesday 13 October 2009 19.05 EDT First published on Tuesday 13 October 2009 19.05 EDT Share on Messenger Close It is a gorgeous day, cold and bright, the sky a flawless blue. A day you could almost believe in God. Amid the throng just down the road from the Houses of Parliament (an institution in urgent need of divine intercession), here is Catholicism at its most assured: a grand sense of occasion, a large crowd to venerate the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux, the plaza outside Westminster Cathedral feeling like a miniature St Peter's Square. Even the burger van, installed for St Thérèse's three-day visit, is decked out in episcopal purple. I start queueing to commune with the relics at 10.30. The queue zigzags across the plaza, and a steward warns me to expect an hour's wait. Entertainment is laid on in the form of a largish screen on which the faithful enthuse about Thérèse, a French nun who died of tuberculosis in 1897, aged 24.

But the captions don't quite fit the screen – a fault never rectified by means miraculous or mechanical. The relics are on show in the cathedral for an unbroken 58 hours. I wish I could have come at four in the morning, when it would be cold, stark and very beautiful in the dim lighting. In the queue I am befriended by two thirtysomething women, who tell me why St Thérèse is important to them. "She represents love and charity," says one. "I was always attracted to her, and took the name Thérèse at my confirmation. She's become a role model: she shows you how to do the little things with love; how to do things quietly, without anybody noticing." Her friend expresses surprise that the queue is so short. "I thought we'd have to queue for three hours," she says, seeming almost disappointed. A journey to see the relics is a pilgrimage, and it should make demands. They explain that Thérèse is traditionally associated with roses – on sale for £1 each at the cathedral's entrance, though many pilgrims have brought their own bunches.

One of my new friends says she once prayed to St Thérèse to help her – the role of saints is to take up your case with God – and, a few days later, she unexpectedly received a card covered in roses from a friend. She knew her prayer had been answered. "Tell me more about saints. What are they like?" I ask her. An unfair question for 11 in the morning. She says she worked for a while in Calcutta and met Mother Teresa, sensed her innate goodness. "But it's saints after death I'm interested in," I tell her. "How does their intercession work?" "They are closer to God than we are," she says, "and we need all the help we can get." I only have £1.30 with me, so face the dilemma of whether to buy a candle or a rose. I choose the candle, but one of the women insists I have a rose as well, and stumps up the pound. Just inside the cathedral, I light the candle and place it on a rack. You have to light it from another candle, and I manage to put my index finger into the flame. Read into that what you will.

I feel a terrible fraud among all the devoted, bowing and crossing and anointing with holy water, but shuffle on towards the casket. A Sri Lankan woman wants to take a photograph of the casket, so I wait before touching it with my slightly scorched hand. She is taking an age to perfect the picture, the queue is building, and eventually the usher beckons me forward . . . just as she presses the button. I fear she has a photo of a large man in a black jacket, not a glittering, highly polished casket. Afterwards, I ask one of the women how she felt in her 20 seconds next to the casket. Was there a kind of spiritual pressure in those moments of communion? "Not really," she says. "This is more of a thank you to St Thérèse, really. In any case, I went to see the relics in Oxford on Thursday, so this is more of a top-up." The atmosphere in the cathedral is sombre, almost subdued, with just the occasional squawking child to break the hushed devotion.

The procession of pilgrims is moving, in a way: people of all nationalities; some infirm, in wheelchairs, with guide dogs; a party of deaf people signing to each other; a black woman pushing a buggy who gingerly touches the side of the casket; a young black man who crosses himself and presses a letter against it. What on earth do all these people want? Do they really believe St Thérèse can make things right? By midday, back outside the cathedral, there is a bit of a buzz. The queue is now twice as long and snaking down the adjoining streets, where police are trying – not very successfully – to stop pilgrims from walking in the road. The key point in the queue – a gap where queue jumpers might sneak in – is marshalled by a tall, bearded Irish monk who looks like he should be in Ireland's second row. No one gets past him: everyone must do their hour-and-a-half of penance. I talk to a woman called Carol, who hails from the Philippines but has lived here for many years, working for the Post Office.

She has taken several days off to visit the relics, at a vigil in Kent, at a Carmelite church in Kensington and now at the cathedral. "This is like heaven for me," she says. She has brought along her teenage daughter Jacqueline, whose birthday it is. "A nice birthday present?" I ask. "Yeah," she says, after a moment's hesitation. I also speak to a middle-aged woman called Ann, there with her 21-year-old son. She used to be a Jehovah's Witness but became a Catholic about 15 years ago, at a time when her schizophrenic husband was abusing her. "Since becoming a Catholic, I've had miracles in my life," she says. "My husband went into hospital for treatment and, when he came back, I was terrified the abuse would start again. He came home and the parish priest happened to pop in. The priest suggested my husband take confession, and they disappeared into a room together for about an hour. When they came out, I immediately felt the evil had left us. He has never abused me since." All this she tells me in a matter-of-fact way, stressing that she is a "new Catholic", doubtful about the "medieval" practice of venerating the bones of saints.

"I am here really," she says, "to get in touch with the Catholicism of previous centuries." Later I meet John Arnold, the Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster, who blessed the relics when they arrived on Monday. Does the veneration of relics really have a part to play in a 21st-century church? "I find it very curious, because it isn't really a 21st-century thing," he admits. "But what I find so engaging about this is St Thérèse herself, who is extraordinary because she was so ordinary. She was 24 years old when she died, having spent her whole adult life in a convent; she didn't have much of an education, wasn't an intellect, wasn't a great organiser or reformer. She simply did the little things of life – which we all have to deal with – very well. And her simplicity has caught the imagination of any number of people." But do we really need the relics, the box of tricks some people hope will cure them of their suffering? "Think of someone very important to you who dies," says Arnold. "You probably want something that was important to them to remind of you who they were. And when we go off to places, we buy souvenirs.

It's not that amazing to feel we're in St Thérèse's presence when the relics are here." These relics have already been seen by 150,000 people during their month-long tour of England and Wales, with 76,000 pilgrims paying homage in six days in the north-west. Westminster Cathedral expects at least that number during their three days here, and has laid on 100,000 candles and 50,000 pink roses for the saint Catholics know as "the little flower of Jesus". St Thérèse's appeal rests on the life story she wrote at the insistence of her mother superior. It is perhaps the most self-effacing autobiography of all time, and the beginning of a religious phenomenon that rolls on 112 years after her death. In the early evening I catch up with Monsignor Keith Baltrop, who has organised the month-long tour which ends this week, and ask him why the book still resonates. "It's very honest," he says. "It lists her struggles and shows her vulnerability.

In some ways she was quite neurotic." Baltrop wants no credit for the crowds still queueing outside the cathedral as the sun starts to sink. "It looks very much as if God himself has chosen her," he says. "You couldn't programme so many people to come." Later this week, the casket heads back to France, and Baltrop can breathe more easily again. "It's been a different bed every day for five weeks," he says. He had worried about getting it through the UK Border Agency, in case they had wanted to look inside. The casket must never be opened, and its three keys are kept in separate places. "When will the relics come back – in a generation or so?" He laughs. "Perhaps. But someone else can organise that tour." BBC NEWS | UK | Holy relics visit Wormwood Scrubs Holy relics visit Wormwood Scrubs St Therese's remains will spend a few hours in Wormwood Scrubs prison The relics of the French Carmelite nun St Therese of Lisieux are being taken to Wormwood Scrubs jail later. The relics have been on a month-long visit to England and Wales, which draws to a close this week.

Thousands of people have queued to see the casket containing bones from the Roman Catholic saint's thigh and foot. They will visit the Anglican Chapel at Wormwood Scrubs in west London, where most of the 300 Catholic prisoners are expected to pay their respects. St Therese - who died of tuberculosis in 1897 at the age of 24 - captured the imagination of Catholics for the simplicity and humility revealed in her autobiography. She was described by Pope Pius X as the "greatest saint of modern times" and had said she would use her time in heaven to do good on earth. As a result, many Catholics pray to her as a "bridge to God". Her relics have attracted large crowds to churches and cathedrals - the relics are at Westminster Cathedral this week - but the tour's organisers said it was also important they should go to places where they could do good. The BBC's religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said the visit to Wormwood Scrubs was confirmed shortly after inspectors found conditions at the jail had deteriorated and gang activity increased. Bookmark with: St.

Therese, Pilgrim Saint: Relics on Tour - Saint Therese of Lisieux "Flower Power: Centenary Reflections on St. Therese's Visit to Australia" by Robert Donnelly A series of twelve contemporary reflections on different aspects of St. Therese "The history and place of relics" Click and scroll down right side of page, then click on "relics #2" in red How relics connect people to the community of saints How relics connect people to the community of saints A reliquary containing a vial of Pope John Paul II's blood is carried in a pro- cession May 2. PHaring/CNS By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — A saint’s lock of hair, bone shards, a vial of blood, even a severed hand whose discolored fingers curl in a macabre way are venerated by many members of the Catholic Church. Others may just get the heebie-jeebies and wonder why holy people’s body parts are even put on display.

But if one believes these men and women lived holy lives and accomplished extraordinary things, "wouldn’t you want a souvenir," a way to connect and remember that person and what they’ve done, said Elizabeth Lev, an art historian and professor of art history at the Rome campuses of Duquesne University and the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. The relic becomes a concrete reminder that the blessed or saint’s body is here on earth, and his or her soul is with God, she told Catholic News Service. "It feels like you’ve got almost like a hotline into heaven," she said. The relic is "something we can see and touch, and it becomes our portal to a world we cannot see and cannot touch." In the Catholic Church, relics fall into one of three categories: a first-class relic is the physical bodily remains of a saint or blessed such as bones, blood and hair; a second-class relic is a personal possession, such as clothing, devotional objects, handwritten letters or even furniture; and a third-class relic is an object that has touched a first-class relic. These — usually small snips of cloth that have touched a blessed or saint’s tomb — often end up in public distribution fixed onto prayer cards.

In early Christian times, small holes were often made to run vertically down into a saint’s tomb or even straight into the sarcophagus so that devotional items could be lowered onto the tomb’s surface or come in contact with the relics of the saint. Creating such third-class relics became very popular in the late fourth-century in Rome after Emperor Theodosius banned the sale and distribution of corporal relics. The sale of any relic is staunchly prohibited in the church. EBay has banned the sale of body parts, and church officials have called the sale of relics on the Internet sacrilege. Nonetheless, demand for relics, mostly third-class relics, of Pope John Paul skyrocketed after it became clear he was on the fast track to sainthood. The promoters of his cause, which were giving out third-class relics for free, had to publicly state repeatedly that relics are never for sale. A relic has no special or magical powers, Lev said. It would be a mistake to believe any object, even a holy object, can be a sort of "remote control" to make God do one’s bidding or fulfill some heartfelt wish.

It’s true some saints, objects, shrines and icons seem "more efficacious" than others in connecting people to God, Lev said. But it’s not the object or the site bringing grace or a miracle; it is only a channel, an instrument through which God chooses to act. "God controls what he’s going to do and how he’s going to do it," she said. Even in the modern secularized West, tours of saints’ relics have been enormously popular. More than a quarter of a million people turned out to see the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux when her remains toured cities and villages throughout predominantly Anglican England and Wales in 2009. Massive crowds also flocked to see her remains during a U.S. tour in 1999, surprising even the event planners. The huge turnouts sparked curiosity in the secular media and questions about why relics would attract so many people, including nonbelievers. Lev said an over-secularized world that rejects the divine and embraces the finite and man-made "leaves a void in people, a hunger to know that there is more" than just life and death on earth.

In the Catholic tradition and in its ceremonies and community of saints, there is a constant reminder that those who have died are still always present and part of the church, she said. "The Mass itself is the most beautiful representation of this intertwining between heaven and earth," she said. But the nature of first-class relics has changed. Most relics of modern-day blesseds and saints are now just a snippet of hair or a vial of blood. It’s inconceivable in the West today that a deceased’s hand, finger or head would be removed from the body and put on display. People forget "how earthy" the church once was, when there was a very strong emphasis on various devotions to the blood or the heart of Jesus, and practically every body part was appropriate for a reliquary. "Hands, fingers and other body parts were very tangible, very lapel-grabbing ways of saying this is part of the body of someone whose soul is in heaven," she said. Paradoxically, many people today seem more squeamish about the venerated body parts of saints than the bodies of living women, men and children being exploited, disrespected and demeaned, Lev said.

"The utter schizophrenia of the 21st century regarding the human body gives a false respect to things that are really not that important and no respect to things that really matter," she said. The church has always faced the problem of confirming the authenticity and validity of relics, Lev said, and doubt in this regard is always permissible. "A relic is not a binding dogmatic contract: ‘Here is the blood of John Paul II; you may pray before it and your prayers will be answered.’ It doesn’t work like that. It’s not magic." The faithful can look upon the thousands of church relics across the world with an eye of skepticism as to their authenticity because, after all, "Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe," she said.

© Copyright 2010 | The Catholic Diocese of Greensburg | A Pennsylvania Charitable Trust | All Rights Reserved | Sitemap | Employment | Privacy Policy | 723 East Pittsburgh Street, Greensburg, PA 15601 | (P) 724-837-0901 | (F) 724-837-0857 | Feedback RSS Feed Archbishop Vincent Nichols: the story of St Thérèse of Lisieux shows that assisted suicide is wrong - Telegraph Religion Archbishop Vincent Nichols: the story of St Thérèse of Lisieux shows that assisted suicide is wrong The most senior Roman Catholic in England and Wales has said that the story of St Thérèse of Lisieux, whose relics have toured the country over the past month, shows that assisted suicide is wrong. St Thérèse, a French Carmelite nun from Lisieux, Normandy, died from tuberculosis in 1897, aged 24.

Photo: PAUL GROVER By Martin Beckford , Religious Affairs Correspondent 5:29PM BST 15 Oct 2009 Follow The Most Rev Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, said the 19th century nun suffered greatly before her death from tuberculosis at the age of just 24. But he added that she came to realise that life is a gift and not an individual possession that should be thrown away, a message the church is reinforcing amid fears that new guidelines will lead more terminally ill people to commit suicide with the aid of relatives. Archbishop Nichols was speaking at the Mass of Farewell for the relics of St Thérèse, at the end of their four-day stay at Westminster Cathedral in London, where they have been viewed by an estimated 95,000 pilgrims. In total, 286,650 people are said to have viewed the casket containing parts of the saint’s bones during their month-long tour of England and Wales that has even taken in the Anglican cathedral of York Minster and Wormwood Scrubs prison.

The 19th-century French nun, known as the Little Flower of Jesus, became famous after her early death for her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, which offers a simple guide to spirituality. Related Articles Archbishop Vincent Nichols: elderly are 'not a burden but a gift' 28 Oct 2009 In his Homily on Thursday, Archbishop Nichols admitted many people had been “baffled” by the devotion shown to the saint’s relics in modern Britain and that even some Catholics had felt “uneasiness” about it. “Some secular commentators have not been able to make sense of it all. I have found their incomprehension quite intriguing. Other reports have simply described what was there to be seen: so many people finding encouragement, perseverance and hope through the example and prayers of this most remarkable of young women,” he said.

“But surely they can see, unless they refuse to do so, her testimony to the spiritual dimension of human living, a dimension which takes us beyond that which can be measured and lifts human reasonableness to new levels, and flowers in heroism, sacrifice and perseverance.” He went on: “The real meaning of relics is, of course, that they are but a sign, a token of the holy life of this much-loved saint. They are God’s way of opening our hearts to his unwavering love.” The Archbishop said the words she wrote at a time of “anguished pain and suffering” now “speak directly to us today when, as a society, we struggle to understand and respond to the experience of terminal illness and approaching death”. “In the shortened perspectives of many, such moments are pointless and actually rob life of all its meaning. Therefore some seek the right to exercise the only solution that is within their own power: that of killing themselves and having others free to assist them to do so. “St Thérèse lived through those same moments. She too experienced suicidal thoughts of ending the pain and the overpowering sense of futility.

“So Thérèse too lived the tension that many experience today, the tension between her individual, autonomous choice, on the one hand, and, on the other, the bonds which bound her to her community, to her family, to those who cared for her, to life. She argues, as we do today, that reason, in the context of our relationships, must acknowledge life as a gift and not an individual possession and, at the same time, embrace death when it comes.”

Question: Whose Holy Relics 'toured' the UK in 2009?
Answer: St. Therese